Grey Gatsby
by PaddyWhack02
Summary: [WIP] Gatsby was a man od many things. A man of passion, of love...and a man of certain darkness, as well. All it took for Nick to realize this was saving his life, and giving himself to the man who took everything his heart had to offer. [Nick/Gatsby][Slight Jordan/Daisy]


I felt a sort of tightness in my throat as my eyes rested upon the individual before me, watching his silhouetted frame in the light of the Buchanans' window. To me, there wasn't anything more beautiful in the entire world-he was the peak of it all. The center of my attention, the call to action that I felt deep within my chest. And despite all of that, I knew he did not want me. Mr. Jay Gatsby would never, and could never want me. I watched those blue simmering pools of sapphire stare up at Daisy Buchanan's window, full of hope and shame and worry. Their affair had been outed during the luncheon earlier in the day, and from then on it had been a trainwreck. The men fighting Myrtle dying, over what? Daisy? She didn't even care about the man who stood before me, she was using him as some tool to get back at her husband for the numerous affairs he had taken part in over the years. Yet still, he stood before me like a puppy dog waiting for its master, large blue eyes begging up at Daisy's window. It took me a moment to loosen the tightness in my throat enough to speak.  
"What are you doing?" I inquired, though I already knew the answer. He didn't even look at me.  
"Just standing here, Old Sport."  
There was a pause.  
"Did you see any trouble on the road?" He asked, hesitantly turning his gaze towards me. "Yes."  
He hesitated.  
"Was she killed?"  
"Yes."  
That seemed to sadden Jay. His gaze turned back towards the window, watching for any traces of movement as he continued to speak.  
"I thought so; I told Daisy I thought so. It's better that the shock should come all at once. She stood it pretty well."  
Of course, Daisy's reaction was the only thing that mattered now, wasn't it?  
"I got to West Egg by a side road," he continued, "and left the car in my garage. I don't think anybody saw us, but of course I can't be sure."  
I felt an anger welling up deep inside of my chest, blocking off my throat with what felt like a steel ball-bearing. I disliked him so much at that moment, I didn't even bother to tell him he was wrong. Instead, I let him continue.  
"Who was the woman?" He asked, finally turning his gaze towards me once more. There was a moment, I think, where he saw just how upset I was with him. I spoke her name, and the shame was clear in his expression. He explained how he tried to swerve the wheel, and I guessed at the truth. Daisy was driving. Of course, Daisy was driving; Jay planned on taking the blame, though. As always, he would bail her out. He had fallen once again for that voice full of money.  
"Daisy will be alright tomorrow," he said, sounding more like he was convincing himself than me, "I'm just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her about that unpleasantness this afternoon." I could feel my face curling into a sneer, so I quickly looked back towards the front gates of the Buchanans' home. Jay continued, "She's locked herself into her room, and if he tries any brutality she's going to turn the light out and on again."  
"He won't touch her," I said, "He's not thinking about her."  
"I don't trust him, Old Sport."  
"How long are you going to wait?" As if time had any factor in Jay's say. I already knew his response.  
"All night, if necessary. Anyhow, till they all go to bed."  
I hesitated.  
"You'd better come home and get some sleep..."  
"I want to wait till Daisy goes to bed." He insisted, but glancing my way made his tone soften somewhat, "Good night, Old Sport."  
I didn't reply. Nodding my head towards Jay, I turned my gaze back to the road and began the walk towards home, leaving him standing there in that beautiful moonlight.  
Watching over nothing.

* * *

I couldn't sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage frightening dreams. Towards dawn, I heard a taxi go up Jay's drive and immediately I jumped out of bed and began to dress-I felt that I had something to tell him, and morning would be too late.  
Crossing his lawn I saw that his front door was still open and he was leaning against a table in the hall, heavy with dejection or sleep.  
"Nothing happened," he said wanly. "I waited, and about four o'clock she came to the window and stood there for a minute and then turned out the light."  
As upset as I had been, nothing hurt me worse than to look and see the man who I knew was glamorous beyond everything, who was so charming and unique, broken. He looked exhausted like he had spent an eon at her window, hoping and praying for her to notice him. He lead me inside, throwing open the french windows of the drawing-room so we could sit together and smoke a few stale cigarettes together in the darkness.  
"You ought to go away," I said softly. "It's pretty certain they'll trace your car."  
"Go away now, Old Sport?"  
"Go to Atlantic City for a week, maybe up to Montreal," I suggested. All it took was one look from him to understand that he wouldn't consider it.  
We sat there a while, comfortable in the quiet as we smoked. As sunlight began to claw its way up the sky, Jay told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody-told it to me because 'Jay Gatsby' had broken up like glass against Tom's hard malice and the long secret extravaganza was played out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything, now, without reserve, but he only wanted to talk about Daisy. He told me about how he saved the drunkard, about how he made the decision to change his name and reinvent himself from the penniless son of farmers to an army man. Jay spoke of the war with malice, although I doubted it was because of the horrid carnage, despite how it still haunted him to this day. Instead, he seemed more angry with how those years at war drove him away from Daisy.  
"On the last afternoon before I went abroad I sat with Daisy in my arms for a long, silent time. Now and then she moved and I changed my arm a little and once, just once I kissed her dark shining hair. The afternoon had made us tranquil for a while as if to give us a deep memory for the long parting the next day promised." He explained, his eyes studying the pier across the bay with an unreadable expression.  
He did extraordinarily in the war. I sat and listened to him speak of his war, of how he struggled with the constant need to stay alive and cling to life in order to crawl his way home to her, how she was the driving force for every single life he took from the opposing forces. He spoke fondly of a few soldiers, of close friends that had now since long passed. After the Armistice, he tried frantically to get home but some complication or misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. There was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters, but there wasn't much Jay could do; it wasn't until her letters completely slowed to a stop that his world came to a crashing halt.  
"Through this twilight universe, Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men and drowsing asleep at down with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed," Jay explained, his face contorting grimly at the memory. "Then in the spring, she met Tom Buchanan. The letter reached me, Old Sport, while I was still at Oxford."  
There was a pregnant pause before he continued to speak, a bittersweet smile breaking across his lips as his gaze finally pulled from out the window to instead settle on me.  
"I don't think she ever loved him." Jay began, "You must remember, Old Sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that frightened her-that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying."  
He paused once more, his gaze turning back towards the open window. I found my eyes attracted to the glowing ember end of his cigarette. It was nearly done.  
"Of course she might have loved him, just for a minute, when they were first married-and loved me more even then, do you see?"  
I looked away, back out over the bay.  
"In any case," he said, "it was just personal."  
Jay told me of how he spent most of his money trying to get back from England after dropping out of Oxford. Looking back on his days in Louisville, traveling the streets and following the path of Daisy's girlhood. A penniless wanderer once more, he followed her until he found himself writing her that wretched letter before her wedding, causing her drunken hesitation. How he met Meyer Wolfesheim, how the two became business partners ultimately how Jay earned his riches.  
It was nine o'clock when we finished breakfast and went out on the porch. The night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavor in the air. the gardener, the last one of Jay's former servants, came to the foot of the steps.  
"I'm going to drain the pool today, Mr. Gatsby. Leaves'll start falling pretty soon and then there's always trouble with the pipes."  
"Don't do it today," Jay answered. He turned to me apologetically. "You know, Old Sport, I've never used that pool all summer?"  
I looked at my watch and stood, feeling an anxious tug at my chest. I didn't want to stay and see Jay dressed in a thin bathing suit. That simply wouldn't end well.  
"Twelve minutes to my train."  
I didn't want to leave Jay, not really. In the end, I missed that train, and then another, before I finally managed to will myself away.  
"I'll call you up," I said finally.  
"Do, Old Sport."  
"I'll call you about noon."  
We walked slowly down the steps, savoring the last few moments we had together on this beautiful, perfect morning.  
"Well-goodbye."  
We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something an turned around.  
"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."  
That was the closest I had gotten to telling him how I really felt for what felt like the whole summer. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. I could feel the familiar warmth blooming in my chest, watching that radiant and beautiful smile find the way up to his eyes for once. I think that Jay knew that despite what he had told me that morning, despite what horrid deeds he'd have to do in the future, I meant that compliment with every fiber of my being.  
I thanked him for his hospitality. We were always thanking him for that-I and the others.  
"Goodbye," I called. "I enjoyed the breakfast, Jay."

In the city, I spent hours watching the clock anxiously, running through the motions of answering the phone and signing folks over into ownership of different bonds. As hectic and busy as my workday always was, I couldn't find anything to take my mind from Mr. Jay Gatsby; not his beautiful smile, not the somber and desperate look he was forced into when even thinking of Daisy, not even the stern and commanding expression that he used when telling his servants something, or addressing Wolfesheim. Only briefly was my mind lightened of its load when I picked up the telephone, only to find Jordan's voice speaking to me from the other end.  
"Nick?"  
"Hello, Jordan."  
"I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead, and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon."  
"Is that so?"  
"Daisy wasn't so nice to me last night."  
There was a pause. Then-  
"I want to see you."  
"I want to see you, too."  
"I miss her," she said suddenly, more sincerely than I had ever heard her say anything else before.  
I didn't respond.  
The two of us prattled for a while and then abruptly we weren't talking any longer. I don't remember which of us hung up with a sharp click but I know that I didn't care. I couldn't have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.  
I called Jay's house a few minutes later, but the line was busy. I tried four times; finally an exasperated central told me the wire was being kept open for long distance from Detroit. Glancing at the time-table, I spotted that it was only noon. I couldn't have cared less if it was my lunch break or not, the overwhelming weight of guilt and dread on my chest was too much to bear. Jay was all alone, waiting and desperate for a call that was never going to come. So I sat on that train and waited, watching the world pass by me as my career swirled down the drain.  
It wasn't until two o'clock that I found myself in a taxi cab, riding along the way to the Gatsby Mansion. I had tried calling once more at the station, but I was only met with the curt words of Jay's butler.  
"Mr. Gatsby has put on his bathing suit and left word that if anyone phoned word about Ms. Daisy, it was to be brought to him, but not anyone else. He has stopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress, and to tell the chauffeur to take care of one of the cars. He is now lounging on the mattress by the pool; now good day, Mr. Carraway!"  
Focusing on the gardens, I climbed out of the taxi and quickly made my way across the yard. It was a good thing, too; as I quickly lurched my way across the yard, something caught my eye. There was a shoe peeking out from a bush, and as I paused near it, I could hear uneasy breathing surrounding the object. It wasn't until a glint of metal also caught my eye that I found myself lurching into the bush, diving to grab the man. The chauffeur-he was one of Wolfshiem's proteges-heard the shots and quickly found his way to the telephone to call what could only be presumed as the police. Jay found myself and Wilson, a jumbled heap near the edge of the gardens. He called to me and didn't discover the wound deep in my gut until I had already faded into the black.  
It was after Jay started with me toward the house that the driver saw Wilson's body a little ways off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.


End file.
